The Lost and the Damned (17 page)

I checked the stairwell map. The overall corridor structure was the same as the Wing B map I had seen, though strangely, there were some side hallways I didn’t remember from before. The room names were different and the map key in a different font, but otherwise it was mostly the same. I could trace my journey through Wing B with Max on this map. How could this place be so different? Something was very wrong.

I saw the lounge I had passed earlier on the map. The one that smelled of burning, the one I feared that the nurses had died in. I decided that’s what I needed to see. For my own sanity. There would be burn marks, scorching, something. I just needed to verify it.

“We’re going,” I said, grabbing Katie’s wrist. With her trotting behind me, trying to keep up as I held her wrist, I walked quickly down the corridors. I was determined to find out, and I didn’t care about nurses, patients, or I security. I needed to know this, even if they wanted to toss me in jail afterwards. I turned down hallway after hallway, Katie scrambling behind me until I finally let go of her wrist. I kept going, sure she was following me, just now at a more comfortable speed.

I passed where the glass doors should be, finding just a regular hallway, unbarred and unblocked. I didn’t even see discolored areas of the walls where it could have been ripped out. It was like the doors had never even been there.

I found the room easily because it was still labeled as a nurse’s lounge. The same brown wood finish and frosted glass pane, not like the last time I was here. Without even pausing, I flung the door open and walked into the room. I expected to smell smoke and ash. While there was a faint smell of cigarettes mixed into the air, there was something stronger in the air. Instead of ash I smelled something else, something equally unpleasant. I couldn’t place it at first, but the air was thick and saturated with it. It smelled like danger.

The lounge was taken up by three of the ugliest couches I had ever seen; covered with a brown, beige, and green plaid pattern. A coffee table sat in the middle of the couches, an ash tray holding a mountain of cigarette butts. The walls were an ugly tan transitioning into a sickly yellow used for the drapes around the windows. Windows! I ignored the danger sense and small and walked over to the windows on the other side of the couches, pulling the drapes aside so I could look out. The drapes were heavier than they should be and the smell stronger, but at the moment I was more concerned with looking out. I looked to the front of the hospital and saw nothing. Nothing. Just parking lot and grass. Not even tracks in the grass where the Army would have been dug in.

In my disappointment, I turned around to look at Katie, who strangely refused to come into the room. Turning around, my foot hit something. At the same moment, I noticed how strong the smell was and that something was dripping off the drapes. I looked down and caught my breath.

On the ground below me, hidden behind the couches was the large bloody body of Nurse Phillips.

I involuntarily stepped backwards, my body bumping into the windows, causing me to grab at the drapes. The bottoms of the drapes were splattered with blood, drenched where they touched the pool of blood. I now recognized the smell of blood, the smell of death.

When I recovered my senses, I asked Katie to wait in the hall. This was unnecessary, as she refused to come in, her eyes wide and her head shaking. I peered down at the body. Nurse Phillips had been stabbed. Many times. I started counting wounds and stopped counting after twelve. They all looked like large knife wounds. Any more than that I didn’t know, I’m not a forensics expert.  I felt bile rise in the back of my throat. I thought she was a monster for torturing the boy, but she didn’t deserve this. Not only to die, but to be practically mutilated with stab wounds. This was the work of a greater monster than her.

I stepped back from the body. My stomach felt queasy. I slowly made my way back across the room. I realized I had stepped in the blood and was tracking it across the room. A newspaper was lying on the couch. I picked it up and wiped my shoe with it, trying to get enough of the sticky stuff off my shoe. I was trying hard not to puke my guts out from seeing the body, and this provided me some sort of normalcy. The smell was getting to me; I needed to get out of the room.

I closed the door behind me and breathed fresh air. My stomach improved, but my state of mind did not. I was still rattled by seeing the body. I had seen so much death since I entered this hospital, yet each time it was fresh and shocking. I almost wished I could become numb to the sight of death, but that blessing had not been given to me yet.

Katie was sitting on the floor against the wall, and I suddenly thought that was a good idea. I slumped against the wall next to her, letting out a long breath. I knew we should be getting away from the murder, either hiding ourselves or letting someone know about it. But at this moment, I couldn’t take it. I needed to sit down for a while.

The back pages of the newspaper I still held onto were covered with blood. Luckily, most of the front of the paper was unharmed. Simultaneously curious to see if the newspaper had anything about the hospital and wanting to find something to distract my mind, I folded it back to the front page and began reading. The newspaper of choice was the Newport Times. Headlines were about a local man found murdered and higher taxes. Pretty boring stuff. I flipped through to the entertainment section. Movie reviews. Back to the Future, The Goonies, Weird Science. Must be some place running a revival. I looked at the showings, curious to know what theater in town was doing a Totally Eighties revival. That might be the place to hit before I fly out of Vermont, to clear my mind of all of this. I could always go for old films, particularly if they were fun and irony was high.

Strange. I looked at the listings. Two of the theaters were playing those films. No, three. No… Wait, every theater was playing those movies. The reviews were not listing the films as revivals or retro. It was listing them as first run. First run for such old films? I flipped quickly back to the front of the paper and read the date.

August 15th, 1985.

I stared at the date for a moment. I wondered why someone had brought in an old newspaper. Who wants to read a decades old newspaper? It was just hanging around in the lounge. It was remarkably well preserved for such an old paper, before the blood at least. I felt sorry I had ruined someone’s well-preserved artifact. Maybe someone’s kid was using it for a report, and they just happened to bring it in and leave it in the lounge. Maybe…

Then it hit me. It all added up. Old school nurse’s uniforms. Old logos on cleaning supplies. Ugly retro couches. The falling apart hospital. Didn’t Lorraine say that the hospital nearly closed during the mid Eighties? If I hadn’t seen so much that didn’t make sense, if I hadn’t had my mind brutalized by all this death, if I didn’t have so many things that connected, I wouldn’t believe it. It didn’t make any good sense.

I sat there for a while, not wanting to believe it. I added things up in my mind over and over, but I still kept coming to the same conclusion, the one that best fit the data. It shouldn’t make sense, there should have been a better explanation. I searched for something else that made sense, something other than the strange conclusion in front of me. But here it was. Somehow I had traveled back in time.

Yes, I didn’t quite believe it either, but there it was. It fit everything. Maybe it was the red electricity, maybe not. But it just stood up to any argument I could think of other than incredulity.

I was in the year 1985.

I didn’t have long for this realization sink. Things went from weird to dangerously weird to weirdly dangerous in this place really quick. Bellingham Psychiatric Institute: the weirdest place on earth. The Santa Cruz Mystery Spot had nothing on this place.

We were sitting against the wall outside of a room where we discovered a corpse, staring in awe at a newspaper while Katie looked around the hall for something interesting. That’s when I heard the voice.

I didn’t know what to think of it when I heard it, just that it caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. It could have been a growl or it could have been a moan, I couldn’t say. What I could say was that it was deep. Without a doubt I knew that what it came from was big, really big. And what it came from was mean. I knew I didn’t want to be near it.

I stood up immediately, my mind completely alert, my muscles tense. The voice was saying something, but I couldn’t make it out. It was far enough away that I could just hear it. I twisted my head and body, looking for where the voice was coming from. Maybe it was the architecture of the hallways, but I couldn’t fix a direction for it. It sounded like it was coming from everywhere.

 Grabbing Katie’s hand, I helped her to her feet. I bet even in her child-like state, she was getting sick of me dragging her around. But at this point, I didn’t have time to hear her opinion. We needed to move. We needed to get away from whatever was making that sound. I ran down the hallway, Katie in tow. I reached a four way intersection and spun, seeing if I could locate the direction of the voice. Still nothing. The voice was freaking me out. I wasn’t sure if it was my excitement bleeding over to her or if she heard the voice too, but Katie was also freaking out. Her eyes were wide, her face pale. She whipped her head from side to side, looking for the voice. The voice continued, pausing between breaths and starting again.

We ran down a corridor, twisting our heads and our bodies, frantically looking for the voice. I began twisting doorknobs and pushing on doors, finding them all locked. We went down half a hallway, finding no unlocked doors, the voice getting louder. Finally, I couldn’t take it. I took a step back and kicked the door open of a likely office. I herded Katie in and followed, closing the door the best I could.

It was a small office dominated by a desk and chair. There were also a bookcase and a closet door, but otherwise space in the room was cramped. I led Katie behind the desk and crouched down with her. The voice was still groaning, getting louder and louder. Katie looked at me, fear in her eyes. I stroked her hair, trying to calm her down and console her. “It’s okay,” I whispered to her, barely audible over the voice.

That’s when we began to hear footsteps. Loud thudding footsteps. The footsteps only confirmed that it was some humongous monster. Monster? I’m not sure why I jumped to that. Some humongous something. I heard slow thundering steps. I still could not grasp where it was coming from and where it was going. All I knew was that they were coming nearer. And still the voice groaned in that same deep, distorted voice.

The objects on the desk shook from the monster’s footsteps and a book tumbled off the bookcase. Katie squealed and hid her face in her hands. I brought her close in an embrace, shielding her and whispering “Shhhh,” in her ear. She scrunched up against me, but did not stop whimpering. It sounded like she was crying. I could hear the footsteps and the voice. It was coming down this corridor. There was no way to deny that. Every step reverberated in the walls. It sounded like an earthquake was rolling through the hallways.

I heard a heavy step, landing right outside the door. I could see the shadow cast under the door. I looked out over the desk through the frosted glass and I saw its shadow. It looked like a man, but a huge man, maybe eight or ten feet tall. I saw its jaw shadowed in the window and it was huge and square, as if cut from stone. It paused in front of the door, letting out its awful wail. I could hear it more clearly now. It sounded like, “Maaaaaaaaaaaaak…”

I hugged Katie closer and closed my eyes. I just wanted it to move on down the hall. In my mind I willed it to ignore us. Any second now I knew it was going to take another thundering step. But that didn’t happen. I opened my eyes and saw the shadow of the monster. The head had either turned toward our door or toward the door across the hall - I could tell which based on the shadow. Then I saw it shift its weight and the shadow move. It was turning! It dawned on me that it was focused on either our door or the door across the hall. I couldn’t take the chance it was ours. We needed to hide.

I looked around the room for an exit, for some place to hide. I saw the closet. It wasn’t an exit, but it could hide us. If the monster just looked in, we could avoid its sight by being in the closet. Then it would move on down the hall. Right?

I stood up and opened the closet door. Quickly helping Katie up, I waved her inside. She moved toward it and froze, pausing at the threshold. I didn’t have time for this. I gently pressed on her back, pushing her through. The monster was leaning closer, and right now I didn’t doubt that it was our door. “Maaaaaaaaaaaak…” it said.

Shivering from that voice, I stepped into the closet, pulling the door behind me, only at the last moment realizing my mistake.

Nine

TRANSCRIPT: INTERVIEW ROOM 5. PATIENT 457. ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: DR. MERILL

PATIENT: The last thing I truly remember was the place where it all went wrong.

DOCTOR: And where was that?

PATIENT: A secret place. A powerful place.

DOCTOR: Tell me about that place.

PATIENT: I can’t.

DOCTOR: Why not?

PATIENT: It’s all locked away. Some memories should be guarded and wrapped in secrets. Otherwise they become dangerous.

I was falling again.

Black space whooshed past me, as I fell through the void, my mind blank. I fell quicker this time, once again landing in the same dining room. I saw the young boy and the blonde haired girl again. The whole sequence of events began again. The boy walks in, she says something to him, and he nods. Then he walks in the living room. I know what’s in the living room and what happens next, and I don’t want to go. I can’t help but follow the boy, as if I am tethered to him as he walks into the living room.

The adult is in the living room again, dressed in work clothes half unbuttoned. Even before the boy has taken two steps into the room, the man is angry. He starts shouting but the boy doesn’t react. It’s faster than the last time, he grabs the boys arm, there’s more shouting, then a montage of violence. I feel every time the man’s hand strikes the boy, now I just feel all those hits faster. The man’s rage knows no end. Doesn’t he know what he’s doing to the boy? He’ll kill him if he keeps doing this! Yet the rage and anger continues. Pain, humiliation, anger, blood, betrayal, hatred.